ATandT, on Verizon's Big Day, Launches Mobile to Any Mobile Plan

AT&T customers can now call Verizon customers without watching their minutes, thanks to a Mobile to Any Mobile Plan that launched the same day as the Verizon iPhone.

Yoo-hoo, over here!
AT&T
Wireless called attention to a new, unlimited offer, as rival Verizon Wireless
readied itself to offer a new Code Division Multiple Access version of the
iPhone 4. The AT&T offer isn't for data-on that front, it has realized that
tiered pricing is best-but for voice calls. Beginning Feb. 10, AT&T
customers can sign up for Mobile to Any Mobile, a plan that lets customers with
an unlimited messaging plan and qualifying voice plan place an unlimited number
of calls to any mobile phone, on any wireless network.

That's
including friends with a new Verizon iPhone.

Individual
plans are being offered for $20 a month, while FamilyTalk plans with up to five
lines are $30 a month.
"We're giving
customers more options and even better value," David Christopher, AT&T
Mobility's chief marketing officer, said in a Feb. 9 statement. "And when you
include Rollover Minutes, a benefit available exclusively from AT&T
that lets customers keep their unused minutes for all domestic calls, including
to landline numbers, it's clear that AT&T offers the most flexibility in
the industry."
Flexibility
and a diverse device portfolio are big agendas for AT&T, particularly in
regard to that Verizon iPhone-which today ends AT&T's reign as the
exclusive U.S. provider of Apple's smartphone sensation. (AT&T sold 4.1
million of them during the fourth quarter of 2010.)
During that
earnings call on Jan. 27, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson acknowledged that the
beginning of the year "may be rocky ... kind of volatile, hard to predict," but that
AT&T will be able to work through it, partly by moving more of the burden
onto the shoulders of Android, which until now it has been slow to pay much
attention to.
Sprint CEO Dan
Hesse, in a Feb. 10 earnings call, similarly acknowledged
that he's expecting repercussions from the Verizon iPhone.
"We are doing
what we can to make sure our customers stay with us and continue to have attractive
offers out in the marketplace," Hesse told media and analysts on the
call.
In the weeks
building up to the Verizon iPhone, AT&T-following T-Mobile's lead-also
began referring to its HSPA+ (Evolved High-Speed Packet Access) network as 4G.
Later this year, however, AT&T plans to begin rolling out a 4G network
that-like Verizon's-is based on LTE (Long-Term Evolution) technology.
In 2011,
AT&T is planning to add twenty 4G devices to its network, including a mix
of Windows, Android and BlackBerry smartphones, as well as new tablets.
"We think we
have a lot of opportunity in tablets," Stephenson said during the earnings
call.

Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.